BIOGRAPHY OF `DUTCH' STIRS DEBATE.

Byline: Steve Carney Staff Writer

As a first-time visitor to Ronald Reagan's museum and a longtime fan of the president, Dorothy McCallum had a stern warning Monday for the author of the long-awaited biography, ``Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan.''

``He better write everything good. He was the best we ever had,'' said the 77-year-old Whittier resident, who recalled listening to Reagan call football games on the radio during the 1930s.

Even before the release of the Reagan biography Thursday, controversy is swirling around author Edmund Morris, the Pulitzer-prize winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt who has been working on ``Dutch'' since 1985.

Excerpts in Newsweek and interviews with Morris have created a stir about the book on at least two counts: Morris created fictional meetings with the former president in his early years; and he described Reagan as ``an apparent airhead,'' saying he was ``distressed by the relentless banality, not to say incoherence, of the president's replies in interviews.''

``I didn't like him mentioning that,'' said McCallum's brother, Edward Dalton, 76, as he toured the Presidential Library and Museum.

``Like anything, you're going to have some negative.

``He definitely lifted us up. We were suffering from Vietnam, and he made people proud of America again.''

While Morris wrote lovingly about the man who he said exhibits ``aggression without hostility, ego without vanity, superiority without snobbery,'' he also referred to his ``encyclopedic ignorance.''

Some at the museum understood how Morris reached that conclusion after enjoying extensive access to the president.

``It seemed to me he was never known for his intellect,'' said Lorene Robbins, 62, of Winnetka, visiting the museum with her husband and two friends from Denver. ``Nobody seemed to understand his mind or his thinking process.''

She said she hated to lose him as governor of California, but called Reagan a ``mediocre'' president, saying ``there were many that were much better.''

``The perception was that he did better than he actually did,'' added her friend, Judy Butterfield, 61, of Denver.

Terry Saucier, spokeswoman for the Reagan Presidential Foundation, which funds the museum, said it has no official position on the book, and has not decided whether to carry it in the gift shop.

That suits museum visitor Greg Voetsch Jr., 41, just fine. He said he has no interest in the book, even though he admires the man who he said brought down the Berlin Wall and elevated America during his tenure.

``If I want to read a biography about somebody, I want to read about their life, not what the author wants to insert himself,'' he said. ``I probably won't buy it, I won't read it.''

Howard Dachs, 60, and his wife, Monica, were visiting the museum with their son, Dirk, a 34-year-old writer from Glendale. The Dachses weren't familiar with the biography, but are such Reagan fans that the museum was their only must-see in their three-day trip.

``Everything he did was for the good of the country,'' Howard Dachs said. ``What was Iran-Contra about? It was about fighting communism, not his personal gain.''

He also recalled a story about Reagan refusing to enter the Oval Office without a coat and tie, to maintain its dignity, which Dachs compared to President Clinton's ``dropping his pants in the Oval Office.''

``I would sooner have Reagan in the White House with Alzheimer's,'' he said, ``than what we have in there now, with his disease.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo: (1) Edward Dalton

(2) Lorene Robbins